Although the jury at Sunday's open honor trial acquitted former College student Stephanie Garrison, it did conclude that she lied about her compliance with University Judiciary Committee sanctions but that this was "not serious" enough to merit expulsion. While UJC Chair Raleigh Anne Blank declined to comment on the verdict specifically, she said she does not think the UJC will be affected.
The Honor charges stemmed from contention over whether Garrison fulfilled the requirements of her assigned UJC sanctions following her arrest for underage possession of alcohol in March of 2005. The UJC Executive Committee, believing Garrison had lied about her completion of the classes and volunteer work required in the UJC sanctions, referred the case to the Honor Committee last fall. Gavin Reddick, UJC vice chair for sanctions, acted as the official reporter in the case.
Confusion arose in the case because Ezana Teferra, the UJC educator assigned to Garrison, left school for a semester, and her case was not reassigned to another educator.
Teferra said in a sworn statement to Honor investigators that he believed Garrison's mistakes were reasonable given that she did not have an educator.
UJC Senior Educator Rob Harry said during testimony it "is not the educator's job to hold the student's hand through the process."
Harry added it is recommended for educators to e-mail students a week before their sanction is due but it is not required.
Sections of the UJC handbook provided to the jury panel stated one responsibility of an educator is "to assist the Vice Chair for Sanction's efforts to process student sanctions in a timely manner" as well as serving as a "Sanction Advisor" for guilty students.
Harry said these documents are out of date.
Blank agreed, saying it was "unfortunate that they got their hands on the not-so-updated copies."
Blank said the verdict does not directly affect UJC.
"Honor has been the way it's been for over 150 years," Blank added. "They did what they could in training their jury and training those in the case. ... It's a system of student self-governance and different students have different opinions."
One dissenting opinion comes from Garrison's father, James Garrison, who expressed his dissatisfaction with the Honor system in a written statement to the University administration yesterday.
"The lack of faculty and/or administration oversight in regards to Honor is shameful," James Garrison wrote inhis statement."While I fully support honor systems in general and I can even accept a largely student-run system, to have one void of mature adults, armed with wisdom of life experiences, needlessly exposes the institution to liabilities such as breach of contract when poor judgment is allowed to permeate throughout the UJC and Honor process."
After the trial, there was an altercation between James Garrison and Reddick, in which Reddick said garrison hit him and threatened Reddick for initiating the honor trial.
Garrison denies any such comment was made.Reddick was unavailable for comment yesterday.
University Police Capt. Michael Coleman said the department is aware of the incident but there are no outstanding charges against James Garrison.
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